Raid help

[Akikage]

I have created a 3 drive raid,
(3) 20GB IBM GXP180 *Harddrives*
RocketRaid 404 HighPoint *RaidController*

Why might I be getting low HDtach scores?

I'm thinking of recreating it. I'm using this for gaming performace. Should I use this 60GB volume for OS, and Game install or just Game install? Then use a 40GB IBM GXP120 for the OS. With that being said, what cluster size should I use?

Sean

 

[svol]

What kind of RAID do you use 0 or 5? Have you installed the latest BIOS and drivers? Are they all on seperate cables?

My CPU fan spins so fast that it creates a wormhole

 

[Akikage]

The drive are in O (striping)config. The dios of the controller card is up-to-date. Each drive is on it own IDE channel, master on its own cable.


Sean

 

[svol]

What kind of striping size did you use for that array? It is best to use atleast 64 KB, I'm using 256 KB myselve but I'm not sure if that is much faster. When I finally get my new drives I will test them for every striping size between 64 and 1024 KB if I have enough time to see which is the fastest.

Also try setting the drives to cable select instead of master, I read somewhere that this might help increase performance.

My CPU fan spins so fast that it creates a wormhole

 

[smitbret]

I've never seen HD Tach give true results with a RAID 0 setup (never tried anything other than 0, though). Instead, try WinBench '99, you'll get the real #'s there.
-Brett

 

[Akikage]

The size is a good question... What is the best, the larger, the better bench resalts. However, will that help with games. Many small files? How did Tomshardware get marks on raid config's.

http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20020830/ide_raid2-05.html

What was used to get that read and write performance mark?

If HDTach, why am I not even close... Max read being 52000

 

[smitbret]

Just ran HD Tach on my drives. My WD 120GB JD drive came in at an average of 49800, I ran the same test on my RAID 0 with two more of the exact same drive and it came back at 47500. I'm telling you, HD Tach does not accurately benchmark RAID 0 setups. My old Seagate setup would get about 18000.
-Brett

 

[svol]

Well if they where Seagate Barracuda 4 drives that makes sense as they are really bad in RAID 0.

My CPU fan spins so fast that it creates a wormhole

 

[smitbret]

Nope, Barracuda 3's. They performed quite well when benchmarked with WinBench.
-Brett